A chat with HungerStation, an online delivery platform for Saudi Arabia [Wamda TV]

Fast food market sales in Saudi Arabia are expected to grow to
$4.5 billion by 2015. Although Saudi youth are
increasingly inclined to make purchases from global food chains,
the vast majority of them still prefer to do so on their own terms,
by ordering delivery rather than eating out.

Social life in Saudi Arabia revolves around the concept of
'majlis' or 'diwanya': a casual meeting area in which friends meet
to chat, play cards, or watch soccer games and movies. More often
than not, these meetings involve food, more specifically people
bringing their own after stopping at several restaurants to pick up
what their friends are hungry for.

Ebrahim Al-Jassim, a young Saudi entrepreneur with a background
in management and finance, is trying to tackle this problem through
his new startup HungerStation.com, an online platform where customers
can order what they want, from wherever they want, and get it
delivered right to their doorstep.

Hunger Station employs geolocation technology to rank
restaurants for hungry customers based on their distance from each
restaurant, eliminating the problem of knowing what is really
available at certain times. The website also provides the option of
ordering from various establishments at once and getting food
delivered at the same time, though HungerStation doesn’t deliver
the food themselves.

The service is available on the web and via smartphone and
provides choices from typical fast food restaurants to higher-end
restaurants. Ever since their launch in November 2012, Hunger
Station has seen a 500% increase in daily traffic and has now
successfully expanded to the Bahraini market. In the past few
months, the success of Hunger Station enabled Al-Jassim to sign on
new restaurant chains such as Yum Yum Tree, Johnny Rockets, and
Quiznos.

We recently chatted with Al-Jassim about his journey and
discussed how he came up with the idea, who their major competitors
are, their current team structure, major challenges he’s faced, and
his views on e-commerce in Saudi Arabia.

Ahmed Al Majid is a graduate of McGill University working with
Saudi Aramco at the Kesytone Center, an idea translation lab being
built as part of the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture in
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He can be found on Twitter at @ahmed_oo.